October: 31 Word Prompts
by H. K. Rissing
Summary: In honor of the great month October, I plan to post one word prompt a day, all centered on residents of Halloweentown, both present and former. For the most part will ignore the fourth movie, am taking requests.
1. Orange

Cody used to think that the color orange was really ugly. Like prison jumpsuits- not that he'd ever had any experience with them, nor ever planned to. Like fall leaves that covered the basketball court and made it hard to play without slipping all over the place. Like cheap candy that gave you a sugar high so strong you couldn't sit still through math class and failed a test as a result. And then, in his senior year at his high school, he ran into a girl who changed all that.

Marnie Piper was different from any girl he'd ever met, especially any girl at his school, where they were all superficial and beautiful, like Barbie dolls. Perfectly polished exteriors, but hollow underneath. He hadn't even known she attended this school. She was smart and funny, and the perfect mixture of strange and self-confident, eccentric and perfectly assured. And it also didn't hurt that, while she was not a drop-dead, like the cheerleaders Cody was by now used to throwing themselves at him, she certainly was not ugly. Not in the least. Or that she smelled like candles, and pumpkins with spice, and brown sugar and fall leaves. But the strangest, and also most attractive thing about her, was her preoccupation with Halloween. Every day, she had a spider pin on her jacket, or a ghost necklace, or socks with skeletons- something like that. But more conspicuously, every day, she wore something orange.

It had become something of a game to Cody- what orange was Marnie wearing today? And it was all those times that he realized orange was not a harsh color. It was a nice, comforting color, deep and rich. He realized that he really liked the color orange. Especially when it was being worn by Marnie Piper.

**Happy October the First! **


	2. Cookie

I want that cookie

My mom says no, makes me mad

But then she eats one.

**All credit has to go to my excellent sister, S.A. Rissing.**


	3. Clean

That crazy Cromwell witch, the young one, whose face was as yet unlined and hair long and shiny. Imagine, having the nerve to barge into his home, his lovely, beautiful, cluttered, pigsty of a home, and tell him that in an alternate future, it would be turned clean. All of his piles of clutter, gone! His filth, his molds, his grime and grit and gristle and other generally disgusting things- vanished! His mounds of trash and trinkets and junk, all disappeared. That he would groom himself, stand up straight in- horrors!- a matching suit set, with a tie. That he would talk in dulcet, calm tones, instead of bellowing or growling. That he would sort socks and read books about the Joy of Mathematics for fun! It was just too much for him to fathom. He shook his old head, and set back about his work, which was tangling things up under the front steps, and sweeping dirt under the "Go Away" mat.

Thankfully, the little Cromwell girl had found what she needed, apparently, and not a moment too soon, because as she was jettisoning away on her broomstick with the squeamishly protesting goblin (whose nose and ears were quite admirable) behind her, he realized with a shake of disgust that he had begun to think their prolonged presence was tolerable! So he and all of his junk were safe. He walked inside, gleefully tracking mud onto the heaps of layered rugs and what little parts of the concrete floor could be seen. And then he realized that the Cromwell and her goblin pet had actually sorted some of his default possessions! (Anything that was lost, he figured, was fair game, and if it wasn't claimed after two centuries, it was rightfully his)

They had put all the no longer in style shirts in one pile, all the books about history in another pile, all of the magazines and rubber alligator toys in separate piles as well. In the time those two scabs had been in his home, they had managed to skim off the top layer of debris and organize it. He shook his head furiously, feeling his jowls quiver along with his indignation. He was Gort, the meanest, smelliest, most foul-tempered creature in all of Halloweentown! He had never been organized once before a day in all of his sixty thousand and twenty-seven years! The mess that little Cromwell brat had left in her wake! It would take _days_ for him to get everything back to the way it was meant to be. He felt his eyeball veins coming out, and his head shaking became even more violent, as he bellowed with every molecule of air in his lungs, "CROMWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLS!"


	4. Ugliest

Natalies' words replayed in Dylan's head for what must have been the hundredth time that hour. "The ugliest, most repulsive creature I ever laid eyes on," Admittedly, he had freaked out when he saw her. It wasn't really his fault. She had always looked so normal, so good, and then, she was just so. . . pink. Het fuzzy hair and squashy nose, and her skin made the colors of her clothes a brighter shade of neon, so that she shone like a beacon. The only thing about her that hadn't changed was her eyes. They were still a deep shade of warm brown.

Even after seeing all the strange things he had been introduced to through his grandma and wacko sister, seeing calm, cool, collected Natalie turn into this. . . . this crazy riotous pink troll thing, hardly even qualifyable as a girl, save for the violent coloring of her skin, was too much. He'd called her a big pink fuzzy troll creature. He'd never appreciated it, in books, when they said, 'the second they said the words, they wished they could take them back,' but now he knew it was the absolute truth. It was possible to regret something almost simultaneously to saying it. But if his obvious shock to her appearance had humiliated her, then his words had angered her.

"Back home, people think I'm beautiful," she had snapped, lashing out in return. And that was when he realized, with a jolt of stinging pain, what she must have thought of him. "Then you must think I'm-" he'd said, unable to continue, and so she did for him, "the ugliest, most repulsive creature I ever laid eyes on." She must have found his pale skin and relatively calm hair just as strange as he found her bushy locks and fluorescent coloring.

He had thought that she was like him. Quiet and smart, not thinking there was anything wrong with him, and yet still suffering scorn from the world, sometimes for no reason. He thought that perhaps he had found someone who finally liked him better than Marnie, who wasn't drawn in by the wild glamour of magic. But he was wrong. She was a part of Marnies' wild, glamorous, magical world, and no matter how pale and lovely her human façade was, her true appearance showed that.

One of the only people whom he'd felt a kinship with in- well, for as long as he could remember, the only person outside of his family whom he'd felt he could be himself- a self-described (because plainly no one else cared enough to) mix of quirky/nerdy, emphasis on the nerdy, with, didn't understand him. Thought he was as ugly as every other female apparently did. Thought he was just the same as every other human, even though he was so different.

The ugliest, most repulsive creature she ever laid eyes on.


	5. Waste

Agatha Cromwell had been nervous all month. This Halloween, Marnie's thirteenth Halloween, was supposed to mark the end of her training. It would have, if Aggie had gotten her way. If she had gotten her way, her headstrong daughter Gwen would still be living with her in their world, helping her keep an eye on things and continuing the long, long illustrious line of Cromwell Witches in Halloweentown, and her precious granddaughters would have known about their birthright since their first breaths. Marnie would have already been apprenticed and trained flawlessly, ready to take over when Gwen and Aggie were ready for her, and Sophie would just be learning her second tier spellcasting techniques.

She had been trying since day one to subtly tell Marnie what she was. It was Grandma Aggie who had told her about witches, told her about magic spells and fantastic creatures, given her books about famous witches and witchcraft and magic, all in the guise of bedtime stories and silly tales. It was Grandma Aggie who planted vivid dreams of flight and far off, wonderful places populated by the strange and the macabre where her eccentricities would be accepted in Marnies' sleeping mind- a world she knew Marnie would dismiss as a dream instead of a vision of the truth, happening only a dimension away. It was Grandma Aggie who had held Marnie in her arms on her first day of life and whispered all the truths of what she was in her fuzzy, perfectly formed little baby ear, knowing the words would not register in her conscious mind, but praying that somehow it would be enough to make her question the mundane Mortal World that would surround her.

Aggie could see Marnie's aura, a bright orange that crackled like a fire and shone all around her three feet in every direction, sparkling with gold and red and little traces of brown. Every year, her aura had gotten smaller, less brilliant. It didn't crackle anymore, but flickered sluggishly, because Marnie had been told so many, many times that the things she so desperately wished were real were nothing but fantasy, told to let go of childish flights of fancy and grow up. Aggie had always tried to bolster her aura secretly, whenever Gwen wasn't looking. Aggie had always tried to respect her daughter's wishes, and never told her grandchildren directly about magic, but this, she felt, was almost unendurable. Marnie should at least be free to choose which path she wanted to walk- a simple mortal girl or a Cromwell Witch. It hurt Aggie so deeply to know that after this night, all depending on whether or not she could do her job well enough, such a powerful flame would be extinguished for all time, and she would have to depend on being able to sway Sophie. (whose natural-born magical gifts were not nearly as pronounced as Marnies', but she'd do. Anything was better than nothing)

That night, Aggie sat in Marnie and Sophie's room, all of which had been decorated according to Marnie's tastes, and therefore was covered in strange glyphs and printouts of the solar system, posters of the moon and bands alike, cutouts from annual Halloween magazines. Her bookcase was filled with nothing but fantasy books, and well-worn encyclopedias of "things that never were". Mystical scarves and bead curtains covered the windows and doors, candles on every surface, a pentagram dripped in berry-red wax on the beige rug (Gwen must have hit the roof about that one)- proving that Marnie did, deep in her subconscious, know that she was destined for something more. But what made Aggie the happiest about her granddaughter's room were the drawings. Marnie had covered every other available space with her own drawings- of mutants and creatures, cats and ghosts and skeletons and cobwebs and jack-o-lanterns, dark silhouettes flying across the moon, broomsticks and spellbooks and runes, and witches, in buckled shoes and sweeping cloaks and pointed, wide-brim hats. On the left-hand bottom corner of all of the drawings, Marnie had written a different quotation about magic, or about whatever the subject of her drawing. In her heart of hearts, Marnie knew she was a witch. She had to.

Aggie told them all about Halloweentown, calling it by name, speaking of it like the real place it was. The book Aggie drew, seemingly out of her sleeve, was titled Halloweentown. They flipped through the pages, talking and reading along, Aggie trying her hardest to project waves of acceptance at Marnie. And it was that moment that Aggie felt bold enough to drop the biggest hint she ever had. On the next page, there was a witch, soaring through the night sky away from the bright Town Hall, deep maroon and lilac robes billowing around her. Agatha made sure that the witch's face matched Marnie's, right down to the freckle on her left cheek.

It pained her to say so, when Dylan asked her to clarify that Halloweentown was not a real place. The ache in her heart got sharper with every word that came out of her mouth, telling her beloved grandchildren that her home did not exist. And later, when after twelve years of heavily hinting and beating around the bush and fights with Gwen about her encouragement of Marnies' love of the arcane, Marnie still had not guessed that she was a witch and come with Aggie to Halloweentown, Aggie let a single tear make its winding way down her wrinkled face as she walked to the bus stop. It was in part a tear for herself, because _now_ who could possibly help her, when Halloweentown seemed to be in trouble? But it was mostly a tear for her granddaughter, vivacious Marnie, born with a foot in both worlds, condemned never to fit in here, born to want something more. And now she could never have anything but a normal existence. Exactly as Gwen had wanted. Marnie might as well just give up dreaming now.

Aggie climbed onto the bus, and prepared to face another year of loneliness and putting on a happy face, yet another year of scheming and plotting, and hoping, hoping, hoping that Sophie would be more susceptible than Marnie had been. Marnie had had so much potential. And now it would all go to waste.


	6. A Family Most Curious

The Mayor Kalabar had always been a paradoxical figure in Halloweentown. Everyone knew him- from the oldest, most decrepit banshee to the youngest little pumpkin-head. He was everywhere, all the time, cheery, energetic and helpful, knew everyone by name, and there didn't seem to be a single problem he couldn't fix. There was no one in Halloweentown who hadn't had a conversation with him, who didn't inexplicably trust him as though they'd known him all their lives. But strangely enough, no one knew a thing about his personal life.

He, of course, had a squeaky-clean record- you couldn't find anyone with a single bad thing to say about him, no matter how deeply you dug. He had graduated from Witch U with the highest honors, interned for the previous mayor (an old warlock of profound age now content to sit on his front porch with his shriveled old wife and watch the people pass) for five years, and when the time came, was inaugurated with no problems whatsoever. The most serious trouble he had ever been in was the one time he had been awarded a demerit for being late to his history class. His parents passed away within five days of each other three months into his mayorhood. He had been married to Andamare Silver, a witch of the Dalloway clan, at a respectable age, and their union had produced a solitary child, christened only Kalabar, but called Kal. And that was all anyone knew of his personal life.

During his first years at college, Kalabar (By now no one knew his first name- he referred to himself as Kalabar, or Mayor Kalabar, if he had to, and so everyone else did, too) had been romantically unattached, but during his last two and his internship, he had courted Andamare, and eventually, she agreed to marry him. The entire town turned out for their wedding. At first, his wife and himself lived in a quaint little cottage at the heart of town, but a few months later, as if overnight, Andamare vanished. Kalabar revealed that he had moved her to the country, because, bursting with pride as he said so, she was going to be having a child. Months later, wife and tiny son returned and both were the talk of the town, the center of attention.

Later, they were both moved back out to the country. "She's delicate," the mayor had quietly admitted, when questioned. "And I want my son to grow up away from the pressures and isolation of being 'The Mayor's Son.'"

Most mysterious, everyone who had known Andamare previously miraculously forgot that the highly spirited witch was anything but delicate.

Andamare and Kal were seen- infrequently, but seen nevertheless over the years. In fact, the only times they were seen were at large public functions when the mayor and his family's presence was required. Kalabar never mentioned them, and no one had ever broached the subject, for fear that something might be horridly wrong and he might not want to discuss it. But notably, every Halloween, no matter how many dozens of parties the mayor popped in at, his family was never seen. They mayor never hosted a party himself, and every All Hallows Eve, around nine o'clock, he disappeared, too.

Gradually, Halloweentown forgot about the blond-haired, ambition-driven wraith of a witch and her dark-eyed son. Nobody went out to the country to visit them in their large old house. Nobody even knew where the house was, save for the fact that it was on ancestral family lands. And later, when Kalabar had revealed himself as a power-crazed lunatic, when they tried to find his family, neither wife, son, nor house was anywhere to be found. They scoured the entirety of Halloweentown, every corner, nook, and cranny of their world. And still they never found his widow and son. It was as if their entire existence had been wiped from the face of the earth, as if they had ceased to be when he did.

A family most curious, indeed.


	7. Avenged

The night air was cool and dry, swirling through the neighborhood under the baleful orange gaze of a fat harvest moon, carrying eddies of leaves and shrieks of children with it. People of all ages scurried, scampered, cavorted and strolled from house to house, turned out in the most varied and outrageous costumes. Kal, dark haired and darker eyed, having just emerged from a shadowy copse of trees in a local park, smirked as he saw them. In a few hours, they'd see the error of having decked themselves in the most grotesque costumes their minds could think up.

The wind felt wonderful on his neck and face- the perfect amount of chill to be dispelled by the black leather jacket that covered his torso. His plan was perfect, infallible; there was nothing that could stop him now, not even that meddling old Cromwell bag, her black-sheep daughter and brattishly ignorant granddaughter. He smiled, breathing in the darkness and the thousands of smells that surrounded him. He couldn't help feeling happily supercilious. Even though Halloween had been branded as an evil holiday where a whole manner of wicked, anarchic things happened here in the mortal world, it was nothing but a shadow of the Halloweentown revelries on this night. Tonight, the seeds of his plan would take root and bloom too swiftly for anyone to stop them, and finally, finally, his fathers' memory would be avenged. Nothing could spoil his happiness.

He heard some shuffling and a wet splat behind him. He scowled- apparently, there _was_ something that could spoil his happiness. He turned around to glare at his new creation. That was why he had been in the woods- to gather together toads, the most complex creatures that could still be used to make a golem. Toads from Halloweentown, where their eyes glittered with evil intelligence and the moistness from their lumpy skin could grant limited foresight, would have been ideal, so that the golem could process more than the most basic of commands, but everything from his world would be turning gray and losing its' magical properties soon. And besides, golems couldn't be brought through portals.

His newly made golem was lurching about bent over double, taking odd hopping steps and licking at the air. Kal felt his lip curl in disgust- he was calling _this _pathetic thing his_ father?_ "Golem!" He snapped curtly. The golem stopped his shuffling walk and looked up at him, deference and adoration plain in his big wet eyes. "Walk upright, like me," Kal instructed, resenting that the golem was too stupid to figure it out for himself. "Stop putting your tongue out of your mouth. It's unsanitary and gross. You're a humanoid creature now- try to act like it." The golem had straightened, sucked his tongue into his mouth, and nodded at Kal's' words.

"Now, try to keep up," Kal instructed icily. "My name is Kal. Your name is Alex. You are my father," The wonderment that entered the golems' eyes made Kal roll his. "Obviously," he said, in a voice greatly strained by irritation, "You are not my real father. You are my creation- I used magic to give you a human form. But we are going to visit some people, and they don't know that we know about magic. We are going to keep it that way. You are not to give any indication of any kind that you are anything but a regular human. Now, repeat after me. My name is Alex." "Mnmmmmmm Alex," slurred the golem. "Try again," Kal commanded. " My namm Alexx," "And again," "My name Alex," "Once more," "My name is Alex!" "Well done!" said Kal sarcastically, but the golem swelled with pride.

"Repeat after me again. This is my son, Kal," "This is mmmm son, Kkkal," "Again." "This is my son Kal." "Now- my name is Alex, and this is my son, Kal." "My name is Alex, and this is my son, Kal." "Now- we've just moved in down the street." "We've just moved in down the street." "Well done. You can stop repeating me now. Can I trust you to behave yourself, carry on a conversation, and not do anything out of the ordinary?" Kal asked, and as he did so, he, for lack of a better term, uploaded the thousands of words necessary for basic conversation directly to the golems' blank brain, along with all the sights and sounds and scents, so that the tiniest little things wouldn't overwhelm him. The golem's mind accepted it, and Kal sighed with relief. The magic that he'd used to form the golem had been strong enough to hold together, even after he'd added all those thoughts and feelings and senses. If it hadn't, the golem would have exploded, and he would have had to start all over. "Yes," The golem said as he nodded. "You can depend on me, son." Kal resisted the urge to slap something as he turned on his heel and resumed walking, mentioning for the golem to follow.

"Now, these witches," Kal began, addressing his creation indirectly, feeling he deserved fair warning, "are Cromwell witches, and they are bad. The very worst kind. They're sneaky, cunning, and deceitful, liars and posers and cheats. They're clever enough to make insidious plots, and patient enough to wait for the right moment to strike. The old woman looks kindly, but she's the worst of them all. And the young girl? She doesn't know much, but she has enough power to reconfigure the galaxy. They won't think twice about taking everything from you- your powers, your family, your mind- or even your life." Like usual, he felt a welling gray ache of pain in his torso, as always when he spoke of the death of his father. But he mastered it, pushing it down with anger, the way he had learned to. His father would not have wanted him to turn into a sappy little loser just because he died, was gone, would never be seen or spoken to again. He would have wanted to be avenged. And now he finally would be.

**Sorry I'm late with this, I meant to post it yesterday, but I was out of town, and besides FINALLY GOT MY HANDS ON A COPY OF THE SON OF NEPTUNE. (no more needs to be said)**


	8. Flight

There was one wish that Marnie Piper always made on every star, birthday candle, 11:11 and dandelion puff- to be able to fly. When she was younger, that was the way she had phrased it- "To be able to fly any way possible." But as she went through elementary school, she realized that anyone who would hear and grant her wish would take her at her word, and so she changed the phraseology of her biggest wish- "To be able to fly, specifically by help of a broomstick." Therefore, she reasoned, she wouldn't suffer any unwanted side effects- and if she could fly on a broomstick, that would mean she was a witch, granting her second-deepest wish- and second by only a hairs breadth!

Marnie had always enjoyed being outside at night. She had never wanted to be far away from civilization at night, but she still loved seeing the stars and the moon. They were mysterious and glistening, light-years away from everything normal and boring that Marnie was surrounded with. She could spend hours at a time standing outside, looking at the night sky. Especially during the month of October. Almost every night, she'd stand there in the scrubby little backyard of their house, in her matching pajama shirt and pants covered with cartoon characters, arms wrapped around herself, mist swirling around her bare feet, her breath blooming in the crisp fall air in front of her, gazing at the black-and-white night sky.

But every Halloween, even though her mother would never let her go trick-or-treating, Marnie still dressed up, every year, as the same thing, because her grandmother had always complimented her on her outfit. Her witch costume changed as she grew over the years, but it always contained the same basic components. She always wore her pointed black witches' hat, her flowing scarves, and any shoes that didn't totally ruin the look. She always lamented her lack of believable-looking props, like mystical symbols or lace-up boots, or a cloak of red velvet, but she was mostly happy with what she had. She did have to hide the clothes year-round, to keep her mother from finding and possibly burning them.

And every Halloween, before Grandma Aggie had come but after the moon had risen, she would take the regular, plastic-shafted, black-bristled broom from the closet in the kitchen where all the cleaning supplies were, and she'd walk out to the backyard. She'd clutch the broom between her legs, and hop around on the ground, willing herself to lift into the air. Later, when Sophie had expressed a desire to play outside, they had purchased a plastic play fort with swings attached. Then Marnie had sat on the swing, pumping her legs as hard as she could, swinging through the dark night air like a pendulum, praying that she would launch forward magically, soar over the house and circle the neighborhood, touching down lightly on the front porch hours later, hair windswept, cheeks red, and breathless. When that had never worked, in a desperate last-ditch attempt on Halloween when she was twelve years old, she had slid down the slide with the broom tucked under her. She had landed in a tangled heap at the bottom of the slide, trying to brush sparkling, crystalline teardrops from her face. She had been bruised for days afterwards.

She had her very own broom now, brightly colored and speedy. She could soar on it, floating through the sky like a witch cut-out suspended on a string, any time she wanted, as long as she made sure no one saw her. Besides the wonder of knowing her birthright, the glory of knowing her power, the power of casting a successful spell, she would definitely say that at last, after so many years of dreaming, the deepest wish that she had cherished in her heart for so many years had been granted, and the gift of flight was finally hers.

**Dedicated wholly to my sister, L.E. Rissing, who tried all of the above, but, sadly, never succeeded. I love you, pretty! **


	9. Appearance

Luke used to hate looking in mirrors. His mother had always told him that the way he looked was nothing to be ashamed of, that his long ears and bushy hair, his warts and protruding nose were to be expected in a healthy goblin, were admirable. He had dismissed her wisdom, like usual, not caring until too late, and gone back to fretting over his reflection. He had been a vain creature, vanity so strong and not usually found in creatures deemed "ugly" by the rest of Halloweentown. All he had wanted was to be handsome, to look like a mortal.

One day, his wish had been granted. A dark thing with an aversion to sunlight had offered him good looks, and respect of certain hard-to-impress Halloweentown circles, if he would agree to be his operative in the daylight hours, and Luke, blinded by the desire to be beautiful, the greed for easy respect, had agreed in heartbeat.

When Kalabar had been vanquished, the spell had been broken, and he had reverted to his normal form. He had cowered inside Marnie's red cloak, breathing in her scent as he cringed on the cobblestones, praying she would forget about him, hoping fervently that she would leave without the cloak, that she would not see him this way. She had come for the cloak, though, and to thank him for his help, and he was encouraged by the fact that he did not repulse her. She was not even disturbed.

When he got home, his mother didn't say a thing about his new (old) appearance, but she smiled behind the newspaper, and gave him a hug. He looked in the mirror that he had arranged to be prominently displayed in his room, and saw all of his warts and his long ears, his yellowy skin and his bushy, tangled rust-red hair. But he wasn't disgusted, the way he thought he would be. He had grown up considerably, thanks to Marnie. He knew that his looks weren't something he should have to hide or shy away from. He was a goblin, and now he knew better than to want to look like a mortal. He was proud of the way he looked. And would never be so stupid, so blind as to help something obviously evil again, let himself be pulled under by the promise of something easy.

But, as he removed his mirror from the wall, tucked it under a dropcloth in the attic, the fact that he had realized his goblin looks weren't something to wish away, that didn't mean he wanted to be reminded that he no longer had any sort of chance with a certain Cromwell witch.


	10. Cloak

It was a sunny Saturday morning, and Agatha Cromwell was very happy about that fact. Halloweentown had been suffering from some nasty bouts of bad weather, and now the sun was out to chase away the fog and damp puddles and stiff creakiness that had alarmingly begun to settle itself in Aggies' bones on rainy days. She hurried on her way downtown, with a sunny smile and a few kind words of greeting for anyone she happened to pass. The sun began really shining in earnest as she made her winding way down the streets from her grand, cluttered house on the hills that overlooked the town to Halloweentown proper. Halloweentown was such a festive, cheerful place, full of happy people living their lives. How could anyone find them scary?

Aggie continued her purposeful walk through the streets of the town, being called out to, stopped to discuss something with, and bowed to once or twice. It was lovely to be respected. She couldn't stop to chat long though, because one of her favorite stores was having a huge sale, for no apparent reason, and she figured that while her good luck held, what with the sale and the nice weather, she might as well capitalize on it.

She reached the store, Ruckury Brothers Lmt. Its large, storefront window, was, as usual, filled with quaint little antique cauldrons and fortune-telling tea sets, tarot cards and spellbooks galore. Aggie pushed her way in, hearing the bell over the door tinkle, and took in a deep breath of the musty air inside the shop. Today it was filled with patrons, rushing back and forth asking sales associates how much things cost, tripping over scarf racks, and messing up the displays. Aggie smiled as she gently shouldered her way to her favorite corner, over by the back window. It was their "Trash or Treasure" Corner- they did business with Gort the Junk Man- if he could hold onto anything he found that seemed interesting until Friday morning, Frederick or Gregory Ruckury would pay him handsomely, and then sell it back to the good people of Halloweentown for a reasonable price, which was why they did such good business.

Today there seemed to be more trash than treasure on the clothing rack, and Aggie flipped through them quickly. She came to the last item on the rack, and stopped cold. It was the most beautiful red velvet cloak. It had gold trim, and a generous hood, to accommodate the matronly yet elegant pouf she had taken to wearing her brown-swirled-with-silver hair done up into. The inside was flannel, warm enough to keep out the dampest winter chill, and it was covered with planetary designs, Aggies' pattern of choice for clothes, and really just about anything else. It was perfect! She had been looking for something to cheer her up this impending winter- the first one that she would be spending alone since her daughter ran awa- no, best not to spoil such a happy moment with such sad thoughts.

Aggie purchased the cloak, and wore it home, feeling very pleased.

**Wrote this for lack of any different ideas. (Mintgum666888, your fic is forthcoming) In it, Aggie is significantly younger- Gwen has only just recently run away from home, and her hair is not yet completely white. This is the red cloak that she is wearing when we first meet her in the first movie. And yes, I did steal the name Ruckury from another Disney Channel Original movie- the Little Vampire. Ironically, in that movie, Ruckury is a vampire hunter, and the names Frederick and Gregory are the names of two of the vampires he's trying to kill. If you haven't watched that movie, I suggest you do, it's a really good one. **


	11. Cupcake

Marnie thanked her friend's mother for the ride home from school, and shut the door behind her. She walked slowly up the driveway as her friend and her mother drove away in their suburban. The driveway was a fiery path of bright golden leaves, and Marnie crunched her way towards the door, fiddling in her pocket for her house key. She had been dreading going home all day, because she had failed yet another math test and had to have it signed by her parent- and she knew exactly what her mother would think.

She let herself in, and was surprised to find the house quiet and empty. She felt herself perk up a little in spite of herself- was her mother not home? She walked through the downstairs of their house. No pre-school Sophie parked in front of the tv, the way she usually was when Marnie came home from school, no Dylan camped at the kitchen table pouring over advanced math, no Mom puttering around doing whatever it was moms did. Instead of Dylan and all his math homework, there was a note on the kitchen table.

Marnie abandoned her bags and picked up the note. It read, "Hey, Marnie, taken Dylan and Sophie shoe-shopping, be back at five thirty, left you a treat in the microwave. Love, Mom," Marnie felt a little moved by the note, and also a little bit justified: it was her mother's roundabout way of apologizing for the fight they had the night before. Her mother had been unreasonably refusing to permit Marnie to go see a movie with some friends, because, with the help of Dylan, she had looked up the movie summary online, and realized it contained themes about magic. Marnie walked over to and opened the microwave.

There, sitting on the turntable, on a little paper plate, was two little pieces of heaven in food form- chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing. They were even covered with orange sprinkles. Marnie contemplated them for a moment. Her mother hated the color orange, especially when in conjunction with the color brown- it probably reminded her too much of Halloween or something equally mommish- but she knew Marnie loved it.

Marnie bit into one of the cupcakes with relish. It was delicious.

**Written because I am eating a cupcake right now. This is supposed to take place before Marnie knows about magic or Halloweentown, so she's in early middle school. ** **Thanks to everyone whose favorited and reviewed!**


	12. Effortless

In Halloweentown, there was only one family that never failed to disappoint, one family that always rose above expectations. That family was the Cromwells. They had been the thinkers, scientists, philosophers, teachers, and all-around top-notch witches and wizards for centuries. Agatha Cromwell, the only Cromwell still alive in Halloweentown, and her husband Roald Fogerty, had one child: Gwendolyn.

Gwen had never shown the preternatural abilities everyone expected from Aggie Cromwells' daughter. She had always been out-and-out normal. There had never been anything astounding or astonishing about her, anything out of the ordinary. She had average grades, slightly above average looks, and an average amount of power. But using her powers had never come easily to her. She had never let on to anyone that using her powers was a struggle, and had a 50/50 chance of going wrong, no matter what it was.

Her mother had never been angry. She had never raised her voice or her hand at Gwen, had never insulted her or purposefully made her feel like a nothing. But that wasn't to say that Gwen didn't still constantly feel inferior. Her mother had a towering reputation, and a reputation like that cast a long shadow and left very deep footprints, which Gwen knew that she was not only supposed to fill up, but somehow do even more than. "It's okay, sweetheart," Her mother would say. "There's still next year for you to get your broomstick license. It's not the end of the world." But somehow her disappointment had been even worse than if she had been angry, as though Gwen had somehow let her down, as if trying her hardest still wasn't enough.

Even so, Gwen had always resented her mother. She resented, in the secret, dark, wormy part in the back of her mind, the fact that her mother was so powerful, when she was so. . . not. She resented that when she caused a magical catastrophe, her formidable mother would sweep in and clean it up. She resented that her mother snapped her fingers and what she wanted was done. She resented her mother for bringing her into the world, with her powers that, when judged on a Cromwell scale, were bottom-of-the-barrel. She had always been closer to her father. He also, lived in Aggies' shadow, but unlike her, he consciously made that choice. Sadly, Roald exited Gwen's life too early. He died of a fatal heart attack when an electrical current passed through his heart during a magical science experiment for Witch U, where he help the post of head of the Applied Sciences division. Gwen had been thirteen years old.

After her father died, she began to stop trying as hard. She dragged her feet all through her apprenticeship, with Aggie kindly, quietly, poking and pushing from behind. When she was fifteen, she started up a friendship with a jovial boy who had twinkling black eyes, curling black hair and olive skin. His one name was Kalabar. His power and looks, his infectious charm, his ability to make you feel good with just a smile, the way you felt like you were the only other person alive when his eyes locked onto yours, drew Gwen in irrevocably. Their relationship blossomed during the end of their high school careers. Kalabar loved to use his magic to show her how much he loved her, adored her. And it was easy to hide behind him, to let his power do the talking.

Gwen fell out of infatuation with Kalabar when she discovered there was something that could make her feel even more special than he could. The Mortal World was filled with people who knew nothing about magic, and therefore couldn't judge her for the fact that she had to struggle to lift a textbook magically. People who would never know that she had always felt like her world considered her mediocre. Their Halloween celebrations, the only parts about the Mortal World that Gwen got to experience firsthand, were totally lame by Halloweentown standards, but Gwen was very tired of all the magical show and spectacle of her mother's world.

In the Mortal World, she wouldn't have to be below average. She wouldn't have to have people looking at her and wondering, "what happened?" She could be normal. It would be effortless, unlike anything back in Halloweentown had been. Effortless.


	13. Frivolity

The doorbell rang, for the fifteenth time that hour. He had printed out the sign himself, which read, "Please Help Yourself To One Piece Of Candy." He guessed the sign must have been torn down and hoodlums had emptied the bowl into their pillowcases minutes after the sun went down. Those children in his neighborhood. . . . they would insist upon stupidity. He sighed. His mother was in the middle of a loud, huffy argument with Marnie, and Sophie was simple-mindedly watching a glowing prism dangling from the window, repeating, "Someone's coming!" happily to herself. (That was ridiculous. No matter what so-called "experts" said, there was no such thing as ESP. As if his six-year old sister could know someone was coming!) Therefore, Dylan realized it would fall to him to deter the reprobates.

He put aside his homework and walked to the door. He had learned in years past that opening the door did him no good; he'd washed egg and homemade (and therefore unsatisfactory) treats out of his hair many times before. "Sorry," He said loudly. "We don't have any more candy." The kids, who weren't even from his neighborhood, gave him the evil eye, and made unsavory gestures at him as they traipsed away. "It isn't as if you needed the extra unsaturated fat, anyway," he murmured after their retreating forms. Hoping that one day he'd have the guts to say something like that to where people could actually hear.

He sat back down, and resumed his work. Later, after the heat of Marnie and their mothers' argument had abated, his grandmother sailed across the threshold of their house. Truth be known, Dylan had always secretly looked forward to her beguiling, strange visits, with her never-empty carpet bag and her bizarre tales. True, her distracting visits disrupted the careful order of his logical, elementary-school world, but it was always fun. Pure, flat-out, old-fashioned, fun. This time in particular though, she seemed to have a large amount of stuff crammed into her carpet beg (which Dylan had decided he would one day steal so that he could figure out how it so insouciantly defied the laws of physics). She always had brightly wrapped sweets unlike anything that could be purchased anywhere else, and this year, as ever, they were present in profusion. And, as ever, there were costumes.

"I think I'm a pimple!" Dylan decided. He then realized that he had said this out loud, when Marnie, the CEO of Nutcases Inc., granted him a withering glance. His grandmother bestowed a twinkling smile on him. The night deteriorated swiftly. There was serious unspoken tension crackling in between his mother and his grandmother, which obviously wasn't helped by Marnie's perky weirdness, the way she only was around their grandmother, someone who had never once shushed her or hadn't been interested when she regaled her with tales of all the strange creatures she found tell of, or the long-winded dreams she'd had.

So, yes, his grandmother's visits were the indulgent fun that Mom's Favorite was hardly ever allowed. He truly had no time for this frivolity. There was math homework to be attended to! 'But what was one night in the grand scheme of things?', he reasoned as he hefted the giant pimple suit over his head.


	14. Haunted House

There was something unbelievably fun about being scared spitless. About knowing that you were perfectly safe, that they couldn't get you, but still letting fear take over. About screaming at the top of your lungs as they came at you with chainsaws and dripping severed parts of anatomy- knowing that the blade was rubber and if they caught you, the worst they could do was grunt that you were ruining the show and send you on your way, and that the body parts dripped red Kool-Aid mixed with cornstarch, but shrieking anyway. About seeing all the strange costumes and death-defying injuries and wondering how long it took them every night to put on all that makeup. There was something ridiculously enjoyable about being at a haunted house.

This haunted house was sprawled across five acres, but the house itself wasn't comprised of all five. No, it was labeled a "Halloween Compound- Family-Oriented Halloween Fun for Everyone!" It boasted a small maze made of hay bales, a hay ride, a haunted hay ride, a ghost walk, a food stand that served nothing but apple cider, pumpkin-flavored things, barbeque, caramel corn and candy apples, and a _very_ fine haunted house. Marnie had picked it because she knew that Dylan wouldn't come unless there were other tings for him to do (He thought there was something utterly horrifying about being scared spitless and had to "go to the bathroom" every time a werewolf made a kill in a movie) and she wanted it to be a family event.

The crescent moon was a silvery sliver in the night sky, and the trees that grew tall and dark everywhere rustled in the breeze, shedding leaves that children leapt to try and catch. Jack-o-lanterns, carved into comical or frightening faces or depicting little scenes, glowed rosily at nearly every interval.

Marnie and Sophie bounced up and down with excitement, waiting in line to enter the house, which loomed before them, three decrepit stories of terror. They'd had plans to go to a haunted house ever since the summer, and they wanted to do so before all the "exchange students" from Halloweentown got there- Marnie wasn't sure if they'd think the haunted house was good fun or be offended and demand to return to their home, insulted. Grandma Aggie had been telling funny stories from a mystical, far-off place called Halloweentown to children who were small and fussy, faces sticky from candy apples, while they waited for their older brothers and sisters to come out of the haunted house. Gwen was being bored by Dylan about why the molecular structure of caramel corn made it so delicious. Marnie and Sophie got up to the house, were admitted into their group of fifteen, and ducked inside, gleefully anticipating being frightened.

Twenty-five minutes later, they all met up again, outside of the barbeque stand. After seeing all of the people who had been mutilated inside the house, neither Marnie nor Sophie wanted barbeque and stuck with caramel corn. They were all having a good time- Gwen, because her family was all together, for once there had been no squabbling and there had been no mention of the word "magic," and Marnie because anything to do with Halloween would make her happy.

Who would have though that going to a haunted house, of all places, would bring even a temporary peace to their tumultuous family?

**I know, I know, I'm REALLY behind on updates, and I am so sorry- the teachers at my place of education decided that this would be an excellent week to attempt to slay us all with work, in order to make up for the fact that WE HAVE TOMORROW OFF! But fear not! More are headed out, hopefully by today, and if not, then tomorrow. **


	15. Costume

Will Piper panted for breath, clutching his red plastic cup, leaning against a wall inside his best friend, Andrew Barnett's, house. The party was in the fullest of swings. The music was pounding and loud, and everywhere in the house, there were people dancing and kissing and laughing and talking. All the usual costumes were there- fairies and frankensteins, werewolves and vampires. Yet all the witches were wrong. Their costumes were all small and tight, slinky and cheap. None of the girls who wore them seemed to have any sort of reservations for parading around in them. Not that Will really minded, though. There was, however, one girl who stood out.

Her dress came down to her knees in filmy flutters, shades of mauve and purple. A black vest corseted her narrow waist and set off her flickering red hair, darting out from underneath her pointed, plumed black witch's hat. The way she carried herself, with immense confidence, like she knew something that no one else in the room did, was spellbinding. He knew it was totally creepy, but he couldn't help but watch her as she strolled across the room, to get a drink. As soon as he was no longer panting like a wild hyena from all his dancing, he went over to her, and smiled flirtatiously. He knew how he looked. Twinkling brown eyes, curly brown hair, a dusting of freckles over pale skin- cute in any language.

"Hey," he said. "I'm Will," She smiled back- there was something utterly entrancing about the small dimples around her mouth- and said, "I'm Gwen," Gwen. Gwen was a nice name. "I love your witches' costume," He continued. Her smile widened. "Thanks, but it's not a costume," Will laughed. This girl Gwen was a riot! "That's funny!" he giggled. She laughed along, too. A slight silence descended between them when their mirth subsided. "Sooo…" began Will. "You live around here?" he asked. There had been many a time when he had asked a good-looking girl if she went to his same school ("I haven't seen you around school before,") only to find out she was in five of his classes, so now he simply stuck with the classic, "Do you live around here," which greatly reduced his chances of getting slapped. "Oh, no." said Gwen, smiling in a curiously shy way now. "No, I live _very_ far away," Will was a little disappointed for a moment, but recovered shortly. "So how old are you?" he asked, taking a swig out of his cup and looking at her sideways, the way he overheard Chelsea Murmbower telling Henrietta Hawthorne was so cute in biology class. "I'm eighteen," she demurred, making eye contact and smiling again. "You thinking about college?" he asked, and she laughed as she responded, "What is this, Twenty Questions?" They laughed once more. "No, but I am thinking about college- in fact, _this_ college, in this very town," she announced. "Oh, cool!" Will responded, blurting without thinking, "I am too- so I'll just . . . . hope to see you there?" he asked archly. She smiled, a strawberry blush spreading to her cheekbones. "Yes, I think you will," she murmured softly, and her eyes really were such a _striking_ light color.

Though the room pulsed with sound, both from the stereo system and the people, it seemed that the two of them had been compartmentalized, literally in their own world. Because he couldn't think of anything better to say, he reiterated, "That is really an awesome costume- what store did you get it at?" she tossed her hair. "Teen Witch Too," she responded nonchalantly. Will chuckled again- Gwen was imaginative with a sense of humor! "Well, I have to go now- crazy parents." She said, after another wordless moment. And she slid off into the crowd, but Will had the best feeling that this wasn't the last he'd see of Gwen.


	16. Family

Ethan and the other boys laughed as he and the rest of the group of "Canadian" exchange students walked home. Chester had told a particularly tasteless joke about female vampires, which all the girls found disgusting, and protested it laughingly. Even though the wind was fairly brisk, and Ethan had chosen to wear only a thin woolen sweater to school that day, he felt warm. He had found a place where he belonged, a group of people who didn't care if he said something stupid in public or crossed his eyes at meals or acted in plays. A group of people who liked him not in spite of all those things, but maybe because of them. It was a new, novel feeling for Ethan.

He had been born and raised on his ancestral family estate in Halloweentown, with his mother, Willow, and his father, Edgar Dalloway. Because his father was leader of the Clan Dalloway, he was a very important person in Halloweentown, even getting to sit in as a member of the Halloweentown Council. He had risen as far as anyone could have expected, but he still wanted more. He was always envious of Mayor Kalabar, for his prodigious magical skill, for his charm and persuasiveness, for his way with words, and he had always aspired to emulate him.

Edgar Dalloway was not a good father. Edgar Dalloway was not even a father. He was a man who just so happened to have a son, and, despite his own deficiencies at being a father, Ethan had never been good enough for him. He had always been too weak, too sloppy, too kind- never the son Edgar had wanted. What kind of son he had envisioned, Ethan had never been sure, but it wasn't him.

Because Edgar was Clan Leader, when he had been a younger man, he had fought in a duel of magical wit with all of his male cousins, and beaten them all. (Once he was old enough to, Ethan suspected there had been a dirty trick or two afoot.) And so naturally, he wanted his son to take his place, to succeed him as Leader when the time came. But Ethan had never been aggressive, ruthless, or even particularly powerful. When they had family gatherings in their manor, Ethan had always been expected to preside over all of his cousins, dictating the games they were to play, to be the biggest, roughest one of the lot. But he had usually let the role of Bossy Little Leader slip away to one of his cousins. And because of his reticence to solve a dispute with a closed fist, he was not listened to as a general rule and excluded simply because his father had beaten their fathers. And none of this passed Edgar unnoticed.

He began to spend more time with his one and only child, but not because he wanted to get to know him, because he wanted to know what he wanted. He began to try to toughen him up, treating him harshly, subjecting him to ridicule when he wasn't strong or quick or smart enough to solve a problem or cast a spell or answer a question. His mother, a tremulous beauty whose powers were limited almost exclusively to casting cooking spells or healing spells to stitch Ethan back up when his fathers' "training" had been particularly brutal had no say in the matter, and if it upset her to see her only son virtually being used for target practice, she never let on. But healing him was the most she dared to do, because she had been raised to never dissent with a single word that came out of her husbands mouth- if she ever attempted to intercede on his behalf, Ethan never heard about it.

Edgars strategies backfired. Instead of molding the naturally passive and kind boy into a cunning warrior, he made him a meek and submissive boy who would prefer to shrink into a corner and watch than take the soapbox and shout his views to the world, with a strong instinct for saving his own skin. Edgar, however still didn't realize that, and arranged a friendship with Kalabar's only son, Kal. Ethan began spending lots of time with Kal, who was absolutely everything Edgar could have wished for- a manipulative, intelligent, hawk-eyed child who could take a hit and keep coming. Kal would decide what they would do, mimicking his father's actions and Ethan, because he was more comfortable being told what to do than telling others, would go along with it, and the more time he spent at Kalabar Manor, the happier he was. He thought of Kal as a best friend, and Kalabar as the cheerful kind father he never had.

But then Kalabar was killed, by Aggie Cromwell, a witch Ethan had met only once before, and she had seemed so nice. But she had killed him, swiftly and decisively, and Edgar told him that there was a lot to learn from that. Kalabar had threatened Aggie's home and she annihilated him for it. Ethan privately was disgusted that his father could talk so callously about the death of a man he had formerly called a friend, and thought that everything could have been resolved if they had all just sat down to talk about it, but because he knew that was nothing that his father remotely wanted to hear, he kept it to himself. When he tried to go and see Kal, Ethan found that the entire Kalabar manor had disappeared. And Ethan hadn't seen him since. And then Ethan had discovered acting.

It was so nice, so amazing, to slip into someone else's skin, to be confident and powerful and proud of yourself, to stand center-stage and speak your lines out to a packed house, the white spotlight shining bright on your face. His father did not like the idea of his son being an actor, even though he was still just a young adult and it was the only thing about his life that Ethan had ever really been passionate about. He forbade him from ever being in another play, but Ethan still knew the thrill of being a star, not being afraid- a luxury that never seemed to come his way in real life. He secretly acquired all the scripts to the greatest plays of this world and the next, and memorized all the lines, even began envisioning what and who he'd want in his own productions of them.

When Marnie had suggested that he go out for the Drama Club, he had been frightened- when his father found out, what would he do? Underneath the fright of his father, a man who, now that he was in his teenage years, Ethan had come to hate acutely, was an intense longing for the rush nothing but the spotlight and the center of the stage could give. The club was even putting on Macbeth, one of his most well-loved scripts back home. When they got home, he asked all of his fellow "exchange students" what they thought, and they had encouraged him wholeheartedly. They told him that if he wanted to, he should do it. Ethan felt a rush of gratitude, and the strangest thought overtook him. "So this is what it feels like to belong. This is what it feels like to have brothers and sisters and to be accepted and loved. This is what it feels like to have a family." He decided, "Why the heck not? If I want to do it, because it makes me happy, I will do it."

When everyone was offering to help him with his lines, offering to stay late after school so he wouldn't have to walk home by himself, he felt very guilty. These people made him feel good in a way he hadn't since his only friend disappeared off the face of the earth, and he was trying to betray them? No, he reminded himself, he was not trying to betray them, he was trying to protect them. Humans were ignorant, biased, hateful creatures who would never understand and would do unspeakable things to them if they ever found out what they were, just because they had the nerve to be different. He was helping his father because his father was trying to seal off the portal and keep Halloweentown safe from the vile mortals forever. That was how he justified imprisoning Cassie in the witches' glass (an action that the thought of still made him wince) and planting the daggers. Worming and sinister in the back of his mind, however was the thought, "but you know not all mortals are evil- like all your friends from the drama club, like Dylan, like Mrs. Piper. You know that there's actually a chance that mortals could accept them, and yet you still continue to aid your father. And for what?" Ethan always pushed that thought away. It made him too confused and upset.

When his father had stolen the Cromwell magic and was about to brick the portal up permanently, he told him to come along. Those words pushed him over the edge. Come along, Ethan, because you're stupider than a dog and you mean less to me than one, because you can't think for yourself, because you're weak and indecisive and a child, come along now. So proudly, for the first time in his life, Ethan stood up to his father, by standing tall with the Cromwells and all of his friends- no, not his friends. His family.


	17. Witch

**Now, bear with me here, because it's been a very long time since I saw the third movie and I'm not sure if I may have gotten some things out of order. All credit goes to Jesusrocks, for having requested this. Hope you like it!**

Consciousness returned to Cody in a swift moment. He laid still in his bed, looking out the window at the still-darkened morning world outside. He wanted to believe that the wild insanity of the night before had been a dream, had not happened, but he knew, in his heart of hearts, that that was a lie.

He had gone over to Marnies' house (which he had looked up in his school directory) with a bouquet of flowers, to apologize to her for their argument. But he had been tazed or, now knowing what he knew, it seemed more likely that he had been zapped by some sort of magic. Because the porch lights had not been on, and there had been no apparent doorbell, he had gone around to the back of the house, and gotten zapped. Whether that was Marnie's houses' standard defense against intruders, like how other people had an alarm system that went off if you broke open a window, or something else entirely, Cody didn't know, and he really didn't care.

He had woken up with a killer headache and an achy body, like he had been turned into one gigantic bruise. His head had been resting on Marnies' shoulder, nose in her hair, and the first thing he had registered was that she had smelled nice. The second thing he had registered was that it was nighttime and there was a nice breeze gently ruffling his hair. And then, the third and most pressing thing he realized was that he was one hundred and fifty feet above the waving pine treetops, supported by nothing but a thin broomstick. He had clung tightly to Marnie, praying that if he had ever done anything to make God happy, that he would keep him from falling and breaking every bone in his body. Once he could think again through the haze of fear, he figured out that there was only one creature that traveled by broomstick, and Marnie admitted to it. She was a witch.

What did that even entail? Cody had always thought that witches were green-skinned and wart-chinned and crooked-nosed, and wore flying black robes and cackled about bubbling and toiling and troubling and toted cats and toads around with them everywhere they went, casting evil spells left and right. But Marnie was everything but all that.

Then his alarm went off, and he had to rush to school. Thankfully, the only time his and Marnie's paths crossed during the schoolday was in homeroom, and she came in two seconds before the late bell rang, and only had time to meet his eyes, wave a hand, and smile in greeting. So she was acting like nothing was different. But then again, he realized, why should she have to act like it was different, just because he found out about this other side of her, just because he knew now that she really, truly was unlike any other girl Cody had ever known?

All day in school, he was turning over his feelings in his head, wondering if he should alienate her, or if he should accept her. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that he should at least give her a face-to-face conversation, after school, which was what he did. He found her on the school's fairgrounds with her group of exchange students (who Cody now realized were probably also something otherworldly too, from all of the strange things that had happened around them), putting up their booth for the carnival. She seemed apologetic and more than a little uncertain, like she was wondering whether she should regret outing her biggest secret to him. But he tried to put her at ease, because he had a fourth realization. He realized that it wouldn't matter to him what she looked like or if she cast spells or if she had a broomstick- she would still be Marnie, a girl who he really liked, and wanted her to like him back, with or without a magic wand or a pointed hat, or whatever else witches wore.

He still couldn't bring himself to say the words, but he had no problems with Marnie being a witch.


	18. People

Pete danced away from the melee of boys in shoulder pads, tackling each other on the somewhat artificially green football field, shouting, "I'M OPEN! I'M OPEN!" Nathan, the quarter back, drew back and let the reddish ball soar through the air. Pete leapt up to catch it and it landed in his arms, cold and tough from its flight through the cold fall afternoon air with a satisfying thump. He hit the ground running, streaking off down the length of the stadium like a spark on a fuse in all the old cartoons that Sophie liked to watch on Saturday mornings. He was already across the endzone when the others finally caught up with him. They all jumped around in a huddle, shouting for a while, because now with Pete on the team, they were finally guaranteed a win against their traditional "friendly" rivals, the Northside Panthers. (They were the Greenbriar Knights)

Pete was still a little bit blown away by all this human stuff. He had always been told that humans were dangerous, dumb brutes who always traveled in mobs and never went anywhere without torches and pitchforks. But these humans, they weren't so dangerous at all, really. They were more like simple, easily entertained children. Their only shortcomings were that they were _so _ungainly and gracelessly slow. Back home, Pete had been told that he didn't have the speed, build or endurance to even try out for his high schools equivalent of the football team- the Puckettball Squad- and yet here in the human world, he was far brawnier than the biggest on the team, and could run faster and longer than any of the rest. And they were also just so shiny. Was the sparse, usually close-cropped tuft on the top of their heads really all the hair they grew?

Now, Pete could understand how the whole high school, if they were angry and frightened enough, had a bunch of cudgels and guns and heavy wooden crucifixes, could seem very threatening to a lone creature, no matter how fast, long-enduring or well muscled they were. But these human students, his friends, they wouldn't hurt him. They weren't so bad, so dangerous. They were people, just like him.

**Pete was one of the "exchange students" in Halloweentown High and he was a werewolf who Marnie encouraged to go out for sports, due to his general fitness, speed and agility. **


	19. If

Marnie was screaming again. Gwen sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes. This was the fifth time Marnie had woken her up this night. She drug her tired self from bed (Will had miraculously managed to sleep through his daughter's frantic sobbing,) and shuffled down the hall to her daughter's room. Marnie was wriggling in her crib, kicking her portly legs and waving her chubby red arms, tiny red face screwed up with the effort of her howling.

Gwen picked her up out of the crib and bounced her up and down, rocking her and humming a lullaby. Marnie wouldn't be quiet, wouldn't calm down the way she had the past four times. Gwen blinked, eyes burning, wanting to just lay down on the carpet and go back to sleep. It occurred to her, not for the first time, how much easier things would be if. . . . if she went home. If she used magic.

At home, she could have her mother's guidance in raising her child, and she could use her magic to help her fussy baby sleep through the night. She wouldn't have to change diapers or mince things to make baby food or wash yet another load of soiled onesies by hand because they couldn't go in the washing machine, even on delicate. She wouldn't have to get soaked trying to wash a squirming Marnie or get messy trying to keep her from putting food in her hair or knocking over her cup at dinner. If she went home, she could ask her mother to teach her motherhood spells that would make her life one million times easier. She knew her mother would be very invested in wanting to make sure her granddaughter was reared properly. The selfish desire to cave, to be gone in the morning when her husband woke up, Marnie and all of their possessions in tow, and go back home, pretend she had never left, was overwhelmingly intense.

Gwen couldn't help but wonder, as she sank down on the floor, leaning against the crib with Marnie in her arms, eyes still shut, what her life might have been like if she had stayed. She would probably have ended up married to Kalabar, who would have gotten her a nice job. They would have lived in a nice house, raising their children, and fighting and loving and using magic for everything, and somewhere along the way, Gwen would have stepped up and tried to fulfill her duty as Cromwell heir. Her mother would have been thrilled, if that was the way it had worked out.

As if from far away, Gwen realized that it would be very easy to go and have that life. All she would have to do was set Marnie back down in the crib, gather up whatever she wanted to take with her, and let her longing guide her home. Kalabar would take her back, this she knew for certain.

She shook her head and forced her eyes open. She could never leave her child, and then she would always wonder, '_what if I had stayed?'_ Her mother's smug, "I-told-you-running-off-with-that-mortal-would-only-end-in-grief," attitude would have been more than she could bear. And it was nice to dream, but things wouldn't have worked out that way. For one thing, she couldn't have held what her mother and Kalabar qualified as a "nice" job, because she wasn't very skilled magically, and for that same reason, she would always be "poor Aggie Cromwells' disappointment of a daughter." And could never lead the Cromwells. And of course, there was also the chance that her children would be born with limited powers as well, and suffer the same fate as her. That was what she was hoping for in this situation, because she planned to raise Marnie in the Mortal World, but if she went back to Halloweentown, she would hope for the reverse. And there was the fact that though they were not very well-off, they lived in a tiny little apartment, and their new marriage had some flaws, Gwen could not have been happier, and in fact, never had been happier at any other point in time at any other place, than she was now.

If she had stayed in Halloweentown, she would have been greatly saddened eventually, even to the point of depression. That was, after all, why she had ultimately left, wasn't it?- to escape the isolation and loneliness and the constant craving to be anyone but herself? But, as she laid the now-calm, slumbering Marnie back into her crib, there would always be the question, "_What if I had stayed?"_

**Written because I always thought that Gwen would have wondered what it would have been like if she had stayed in Halloweentown. **


	20. Pain

Andamare had been watching the skies eagerly all night, Her son, Kalabar Jr., would be returning any moment, triumphant, having turned all of Halloweentown gray, and all the mortals into creatures. Andamare felt particularly smug when she considered the elegance of her revenge against the wretched Cromwells- because Aggie had killed her beloved Kalabar, Andamare had Kalabar Jr. turn her homeworld gray, and because Gwen had helped her (and also because Kalabar had still been in love with her, no matter what he said.) Kalabar Jr. had turned her homeworld into the very creatures she had been trying to escape from, and her into a hag, so no one would ever want her again, to boot!

She laughed, happy fireworks of green sparks popping from her fingertips. She ceased immediately, checking herself. After Kalabar had been vanquished by those Cromwells, it had been a simple matter to tap into Kalabar Jrs. Vast reserve of magic and hide the house from the pesky citizens who came looking for them later, whether to offer them condolences or throw them in jail. The house was never found, but Andamare got the feeling they were still watching where the house had been waiting for any flickers of magic to make itself known. She and Kalabar Jr. had always trained, honing his magic in the forests surrounding their house instead of in it or particularly near it, to help keep suspicions away.

A star came loose from the sky, winging it's way to earth. As it plummeted onto the lawn in front of the house, Andamare realized it was not a star, but her son, Kalabar Jr. who had come streaking down from the sky in a blaze of golden light. Andamare felt a little worried- Kalabar Jrs. Signature magical color was blue. She leapt from her set by the window and minced out the door, trotting across the rippling grass to where her son landed, creating his own crater in the ground.

Golden flames still licked over his prone form, his blue sparks rushing frantically, trying to repair whatever extensive damages had been done. There was only one family powerful enough to incapacitate Kalabar Jr. like that. Cromwells.

She knelt in the crater next to him, and tried to put a hand on his shoulder. With a sparking snap, the golden fire seared her palm. Biting back a scream, she healed her hand, and then concentrated. Her pupils unfocused as she slid into her second sight. Kalabar Jrs.' Body, which should have appeared bright blue in her second sight, was the dullest, palest color, wrapped in dark vines that looked like his own creation, a latticework of golden flame burning all over. She used her powers to draw the fire into one spot, over his stomach, and then withdrew it, flinging it hastily into the sky, not bothering to look at whatever malignant curse was at the heart of it, where it exploded like a deadly firework.

Kalabar Jrs. eyes flew open, mouth in a silent scream as he convulsed, writhing in delayed pain caused by the golden magic, having been unconscious because the agony had been too much for him to bear. Andamare allowed him his moment of childishness, from which he recovered quickly. He sat up, brushing dirt, soot and vines off himself. He looked terrible. Dark navy half moons under his eyes were horribly evident in the paleness of his skin- which no longer looked simply pale, but rather cadaverous, and they were echoes in the blue bruises scattered in random intervals on his person. Small streaks of silver peppered his hair, his shoulders were slumped and his clothes, which were ripped and still smoking in come places, hung off of him as though he'd lost thirty-five pounds that he couldn't afford to lose. He opened his mouth to speak, but instead broke off into a hacking cough. The blood that spattered his hand when he drew it away from his mouth, was leaking out of his nose and his left ear looked more like black sludge littered with lumps of gunk. He had expended so much of his magic somewhere along the way that he was literally inches away form knocking on death's door.

All of that could be fixed. At least he had won, defeated those despicable Cromwells. Her revenge was complete.

Kalabar Jr. stood up, continuing to brush soot off himself, wincing as he did so. "Where are the spellbooks?" Andamare inquired. Kalabar Jr. avoided her eyes as he muttered sullenly, "I don't have them," and that was when Andamare realized something had gone terribly wrong. Her worry for how ill her son looked was pout aside in favor of anger. "Well, where are they, then?" she demanded. "The young Cromwell must have time traveled, or something, because she got out of Halloweentown, came to the gym and challenged me. I thought I could handle her, but I was wrong. She took both spellbooks and sent me away. I only barely managed to land here, instead of in a different dimension." He said, hating the whine in his voice as he tried to justify himself to his mother.

Andamare had gone white as a sheet, hands clenched into fists of building rage. "Do not think to attempt to engender sympathy in me, boy," she said, voice the lowest of icy whispers. "It is through your own, most grievous stupidity that you have failed. HOW COULD YOU? OUR PLAN WAS UTTERLY FOOL-PROOF, ONLY AN IDIOT COULD HAVE FOUND A WAY TO MESS IT UP!" her voice had spiraled into a dizzying, ringing shriek, ramping the dull ache in Kal's head into an acute pain. "It's not _my_ fault she's more resourceful than _you_ gave her credit for! And it's also not my fault that she's more powerful than me- rather, I'd say that's your fault as well!" he returned. She pointed her witching finger at him and Kal wisely fell silent- it wouldn't take much to finish him off in his weakened state. "Don't you DARE try to turn this around on me like it's MY fault! I entrusted you with a plan so that we could have revenge for the death of your father, foolishly believing that I could trust you- because of your astonishing mental ineptitudes, I guess I shouldn't have! Perhaps you _didn't_ want to avenge your father; maybe you wanted that snot-nosed Cromwell brat to triumph. Did she have long shiny hair and smell good too?" she jeered, and despite his weakness, Kal snarled, "Of course I want revenge just as much as you do! And if you could have done such a better job, maybe _you_ should have gone and created a stupid golem and toted it around with you and tricked the Cromwell into showing you her grandmother's book and trapped her in Halloweentown and everything else!" Andamare snapped, "You've ruined _everything,_ you foolish, stupid excuse for a boy." She climbed out of the crater, back deliberately to her son, and began stalking back toward the house, throwing a parting comment over her shoulder at the son she ad never wanted to hurt so desperately as in that moment, "come inside when you're ready to act like an adult, to be the son your father would have been proud of. Thanks to you, we have a lot of planning to do."

Kal stood, a lone, stooping figure silhouetted against the sky. He hunched further, his arms wrapped around himself as if he could hold in the metaphorical blood his mother's barbed statements had caused. She was right- his father would not have been proud of a stupid son who let him down time and time again, couldn't even manage to avenge him. He sank to his knees and rolled his torso down so his arms touched his legs, like a wind-up toy that had lost it's motion. He had hoped his mother would understand, would take him into a hg that smells of soap bubbles and black feathers, the way he remembered her hugs were from his childhood, and tell him that she understood, that they would just form a new plan, that it wasn't his fault, that his father would have understood. A choked sob worked its way through his clenched teeth as he huddled on the ground, as if waiting for the next blow the world that hated him and his entire family would deal. He had been sincerely delusional to hope that his mother would understand- he only had worth to her when he could help her achieve some ends, when he proved that he was black-hearted Kalabar's ruthless son.

He indulged in a few moments of pointless pain- physically, from having drained himself nearly dry of not only magic, but also life force, and mentally, from his mother's insinuations that he was a failure, a disappointment, a weakling, and from having been beaten by an exponentially less trained little girl, Cromwell though she may be. He stood once more, blinking eyes that felt crusty with the tears he was trying desperately not to shed, arms knotted around himself tightly, holding himself together, and began to haul his sore self into the house. It was time for their planning to begin anew, and this time, with steel determination glowing maniacally in his eyes, he_ would not fail. _

**Yikes, Kal backstory! So, in a nutshell, his mother was obsessively in love with his father, who was still in love with Gwen Cromwell/Piper (thus, because it's Andamare orchestrating this whole thing- because I just don't think a fifteen-year-old, no matter how brilliant, could have come up with that whole thing- she get's turned into a hag) Then Kalabar was killed, and she went psycho, especially where her son was concerned, because she wanted, more than anything in the world, to avenge Kalabar, who she is still in love with, and he could help her do that. (A side note- she is more in love with his powers and what he could do with them than the actual him) Kal is only helping because, 1.) it's his parents, 2.) he knows "drive for revenge" is a proper emotion to feel after a parent is killed, and he knows it's what his mother wants him to exhibit. He doesn't honestly miss Kalabar; he was always terrified of letting him down, and thus, is **_**still**_** terrified of letting his memory down. Also, his mother kept referring to him as "Kalabar Jr." because to her, that's all he is- an extension of his father, not his own person. Which would kind of mess anyone up. Hope you liked it!**


	21. Arguments and Parties

Marnie had waited throughout the long summer for the first frost of fall, as she always did, but this year the wait was not nearly as long or arduous to endure. This was because it was the first time her grandmother had stayed with them all year round. Her grandmother was teaching her all sorts of wonderful, magical things, and she was learning very quickly- now if only this ease would translate to learning math! And all throughout the summer, Marnie and Aggie had been plotting.

Since the very first day Grandma Aggie had been in their little town in Massachusetts, she had taken it into her mind that this year, they would have a Halloween party. So all winter, spring, and summer, Marnie and Aggie had been making plans for the most amazing Halloween party their little division of suburbia had ever seen.

So now that the first leaves had turned golden and spiraled off the trees, carried on chilly winds, Marnie approached her mother. She and Grandma Aggie had planned this carefully. Aggie was situated in the living room, watching TV while Marnie went to talk to her mother in the kitchen. "Hey, Mom." She began. Her mother looked up from the greasy roasting pan she had been scrubbing. "Oh, hey, Marnie," She responded. "So Mom," Marnie continued. "I've been making really good grades in school- I've got all A's and B's. And because this is Grandma's first year away from Halloweentown, do you think we could have a Halloween party?"

When Marnie had mentioned her grandmother, Gwen knew immediately what her daughter was angling for. She let her sudsy brush clatter into the halfway-finished pan, and put her wet hands on her aproned hips and turned to glare at her daughter. "Absolutely not! Just because you know about where your grandmother comes from now does NOT mean that I am going to change aspects of how I have peacefully raised my family for the past fifteen years," She snapped, fuming, back to her pan. Marnie put her hands on her hips as well, and tossed her long, scrunchie-bound hair over her shoulder. "Well, because of your irrational fear of what we are, we haven't exactly been peacefully raised! It's so annoying how you never let us be normal, you never let us talk about magic or Halloweentown or anything remotely cool, and I_" "Young lady, I will not tolerate you disrespecting me like this. It's my house and my rules- you're my children and I'll raise you as I see fit, not he way you, or even my mother," Gwen spoke, casting a sharp glance at Aggie, who she now surmised was in on the whole thing because she was pretending not to have noticed a thing in the living room, "think I should."

Marnie huffed and shifted her weight to her other foot. "Mom, what's dangerous about our home? I mean, when we were younger, before we knew about Halloweentown, it kind of made sense for you not to let us have a party or go trick-or-treating, but now that we know, it's really obnoxious!" she cried, filled with welling indignation at her mother's behavior. "I've told you again and again, you're only a teenager. You don't know what you want, what will be best for you in fifteen years, and just because Halloweentown seems like fun doesn't mean that it's where you belong!" Angry tears had sprung up in Marnie's eyes. "That is too where I belong! It doesn't matter what you've tried to make yourself, or what our father was, or what you almost made me! I am a witch and Halloweentown is my home! It's more than fun, it's my heritage! Just because you made your choice to reject your background doesn't mean that I will too! And if I want to have a harmless little Halloween party, I think I should be allowed to! It's not like I'm suggesting you let us stay out until three in the morning getting drunk! You'll be right here to supervise, there'll be no magic, and I won't invite anyone stupid! I mean, really, I don't think this one little thing is asking too much!" Marnie finished her heated and loud tirade with an angry tremor in her voice. Her mother had let her finish her furious monologue because she knew there would be no reasoning with her until she did. "Now, Marnie, you listen to me. At the age of fifteen, you don't know half so much as you think you do, and it's time you realized that. You want to condemn me for treating you like a child, but is it wrong of me to do so when you not only are one, but behave like one as well?" Marnie's outrage would have been comical if she had not been so upset. Dylan finally looked up from his science textbook, peering irritatedly through his thick-rimmed glasses at the other members of his family. "When did this deteriorate into an argument about Halloweentown? I thought this was about a Halloween party?"

By now, Sophie had muted the TV and was watching the preceding argument with indecent interest. Aggie had also turned around to spectate. "I am NOT," shouted Marnie, "A CHILD!" Aggie hastened over to her granddaughters side. "Now dear, there's no need to shout. We all know you're not a child. Gwen, sweetheart, don't you think it makes sense to let the children have a party? It really isn't-" Gwen snarled, "Oh, so it's YOUR fault! You planted the idea that they should have this ridiculous party in her brain and now you're turning her against me!" Grandma Aggie tried to look calming and motherly, but came off looking patronizing instead. "Dear, I'm not trying to turn anyone against you, least of all your own children. I'm just saying that there really is no reason for you not to let them have a party. Don't you think you're being a little bit unreasonable?"  
>Gwen's mouth flattened into a line and her orange freckles stood out vividly on her paled face. "No, I don't think I'm being unreasonable at all. I'm the mother, and what I say goes! I shouldn't give into my child's demands just because I'm afraid of the fit she'll throw if I don't." Sophie jumped off the couch and bounced into the kitchen. "Come on, Mom! It'd be really fun! We wouldn't mention magic, or anything you don't like at all, and you won't have to plan it because Marnie and Grandma already did that, or clean up after it or anything!" Marnie glared at her little sister, for revealing the fact that they'd already made plans (which neither she nor Grandma Aggie knew Sophie knew about) and Gwen glared at her mother for daring to make plans for a Halloween party, of all things, behind her back.<p>

"Please, Mom?" asked Sophie again, not because she wanted a Halloween party, but because she knew it was one of Marnie's deepest wishes. "Yeah, pleeeeeeeeease, Mom?" questioned Marnie. "I'll keep my rom clean, I'll was the dishes and take out the trash without being reminded for a month, I won't mention magic and I'll get straight A's- if only you'll let us have this party, pleeeease?" Grandma Aggie hadn't said anything, but the look she was giving her daughter said far more. Gwen stared icily at her three female relations, and then turned abruptly to face Dylan, who was still studiously scratching away at his homework. "Dylan?" she demanded. "What do you think? Do you think we should have a Halloween party this year?" Dylan slowly scanned the assembled faces- his grandmother looked encouraging, Sophie hopeful, Marnie incensed because her chances of having the party were being jeopardized by her notoriously anti-Halloween brother. "Well," he began. "if it'll shut Marnie up and make her do all the dished for a month, fine, why not?" and he turned back to his homework, because that was all that was truly on his mind, not whether or not they would be having the party.

Marnie, Sophie and Grandma Aggie turned back to Gwen with bated breath. Gwen threw her hands in the air and turned back to the sink. "Fine! Let's have a Halloween party!" Marnie punched the air triumphantly, Sophie jumped up and down, and Grandma Aggie capped her hands, laughed and hugged each of her granddaughters in turn. "I get the feeling this is NOT going to end well," Gwen muttered under her breath to the roasting pan.

**I wrote this one because I didn't figure Gwen would have given in to letting them have a Halloween party without a lot of cajoling and arguing. I also wanted to portray that Marnie, while she has grown up since the first movie, she still is a little bit childish in her mannerisms. And as you'll recall, because of this Halloween party, Kal managed to steal the other copy of the spellbook, draw Aggie and Marnie into Halloweentown to be trapped by the Gray Spell and lure Gwen to the school dance to be hag-ified, so Gwen is right- the party decidedly does not end well. **


	22. Tagalong

"Mom and Grandma are witches and SO AM I!" Sophie remembered Marnie's frantically happy and yet hushed whisper. She was talking to Dylan, who was vastly unimpressed by this proclamation. Sophie supposed that her older siblings thought she was asleep, which was funny- as if anyone could actually sleep with their hands wadded up under their face like that!

While both of her older siblings rushed to the window to watch their grandmother walk past and discuss whether or not her carpetbag was remote-controlled, Sophie made up her mind that she would somehow follow her siblings- she wanted not to be left out of the fun, and if both Marnie and Grandma were involved without Mom's supervision, it was bound to be fun! So, very quietly, Sophie slid out of her bed, bundled up her pajamas in an approximation of where her body had been, put on jeans and a white blouse, struggling with the buttons. As an afterthought, because it was cold outside, she threw on her pink coat. It made her happy with its bubblegum pink shade.

When she poked her head out of the closet sneakily, she saw nothing in the room, and rushed over to the window with a sinking feeling. She could see Dylan and Marnie already hiding behind a stack of haybales on Mrs. Hicklestons' front lawn. There was no way she could catch up to them now, and also no way she could slink past her mother unnoticed without Marnie's guidance. Sophie felt her lips start trembling and a lump rising in her throat. She flung herself down against the wall underneath the window. More fervently than anything, she wanted to go with her siblings. All the sudden, the air was a lot cooler around her. She had left her room and appeared in the bushes of Mrs. Hickleston's yard! She didn't have time to marvel over it- maybe she was a witch, too!- because Marnie and Dylan were taking off at a run for a strange-looking orange school bus. With a lack of any other actions, she burst out of the bushes and ran full tilt for the bus. Instead of getting in the back door like Marnie and Dylan had, she ran around to the whooshing front doors. She held a small finger to her lips and flashed a pearly white grin at the driver, who grinned in return, shut the doors, and floored it.

Sophie wished she had picked a better place to hide other than in the steps that lead out of the bus. Though she was protected from the sightline of any of the other passengers of the bus, the driver didn't seem overly cautious as to how he was operating the vehicle. After what seemed like only a few minutes in a dark tunnel full of flashing lights, they touched down in a strange town with bright buildings and dark trees and a big tawny-orange pumpkin that looked vaguely bereft. Sophie clambered off the bus the second the doors opened, and then it occurred to her that she needed a place to hide so her grandma or her siblings wouldn't see her and send her home. She crawled under the school bus, (which she now guessed was not a school bus at all.) ducked behind one of the tires and watched the feet of their fellow passengers float by. Once her grandmother's buckled shoes had marched out of view, Sophie scrambled out from behind the tire. The bus pulled away, and she saw her brother and sister across the square, staring at her.

She waved. The looks of shock on their faces were priceless.

**I wrote this one because I always struggled to find a rational explanation as to how Sophie, a seven-year-old, (or so- don't quote me on that) followed her older siblings unnoticed. So I now think that she must have used her powers, probably subconsciously. I need inspiration for five more word prompts, (Mintgum666888, I'm so sorry its taken me this long, yours is coming, it just really stumped me, and Jesusrocks, yours is forthcoming as well.) so if there's anything at all that you want to hear, I'd be glad to write it!**


	23. Sisters

**Okay, Jesusrocks, this is the nice Sophie-Marnie sister moment you requested- I hope you like it!**

Sophie blinked, yawned and stretched. When they had moved to their new home to make room for their grandma, Sophie and Marnie had gotten separate rooms, which was a good thing, because Marnie was a real slob and usually wanted to blame the mess on Sophie. Marnie and Sophie had been arguing a lot recently. Whenever Sophie wanted to borrow anything or Marnie's, whether it was a hair wrapper, or a shirt or an old Barbie doll, Marnie always said no. So whenever Marnie asked Sophie for a favor (like last Tuesday, when Marnie had had a lot of homework, and a project and three test the next day, and it was her night to do the dishes, she asked Sophie to do it for her.) Sophie would say no. The sisters had been bickering over small things as of late, but the night before, it had escalated into something far more serious.

Marnie had been in her room, listening to Celtic music turned up too loud, and Sophie had been aching to try something for a long time. Ever since she had seen Marnie swopping effortlessly around the square in Halloweentown, she had wanted to try flying. So Sophie had snuck out to the garage and picked up Marnie's broomstick. It hummed with friendly energy, brightly colored and encouraging. She had clambered on and hopped out of the garage. She hadn't gotten three feet into the air or five feet away from the driveway when she had crashed into a tree and tumbled to the ground, broomstick broken in three jagged, lonely, irreparable pieces around her. She had been warned by Aggie not to touch Marnie's broom, because if even one o the bristles came off, the broomstick would start losing the charm that enabled it to fly, and that loss couldn't be reversed or redone- Sophie didn't even want to think about how quickly she'd broken the charm when she shattered the broomstick. Feeling utterly sick, she had collected the pieces and scrambled inside, putting the pieces back in the place where the broomstick had once sat.

Marnie had found them, later in the evening, and she knew there was once person in the house who would be interested in borrowing her broom and inexperienced enough to wreck it. She had stormed into the living room, where Sophie had been sitting on the couch, waiting for the inevitable tidal wave of rage, which Marnie easily and loudly supplied. Though Sophie hadn't let on at the time, some of the things Marnie had said had hurt her deeply. She had only tried to fly the broomstick because she had wanted to be like her older sister, who she admired so much. Grandma Aggie had dispersed the fight in Gwen's' absence and transferred Marnie's bright broomstick pieces into a sleek iron model with a handle that would shrink into a charm or expand into a broom at her command, so that she could always keep it with her. Marnie had glared so angrily at Sophie that she couldn't help but shy away. "I will definitely be doing that," she had hissed and stomped back to her room.

Sophie felt very bad as she recalled that. She went down to the kitchen and fixed herself a bowl of cereal. She took her cereal into the living room and turned on the TV, volume down low because no one else was awake yet. She found the channel that played her favorite Saturday morning cartoons, but they didn't make her giggle the way they usually did. She was still too upset about the destruction of Marnie's most prized possession and their subsequent fight.

The couch beside Sophie creaked. Marnie had sat down next to her, white flannel nightshirt glowing blindingly in the light of the early morning sun slanting in the window. They watched cartoons in silence for a moment, until Marnie said, "I'm sorry about yelling at you and being so mean- I don't really think any of that awful stuff about you." Sophie set down her bowl of sugary milk. "I'm sorry I took your broom without asking and wrecked it," Marnie smiled kindly. "Don't worry about it- it wasn't that big of a deal anyway. I kind of overreacted." Sophie turned incredulously to her sister. "I thought you'd be mad at me forever and ever!" she exclaimed, the dark raincloud that had been hanging over her head for the whole morning dissipating. Marnie laughed. "I could never stay mad at you for a long time, Soph. You're my sister, and sisters are friends forever and ever."

The two Cromwell witches-in-training hugged and then leaned against each other, watching cartoons in companionable silence.

**I wrote this one the way I did because I wondered when Marnie had gotten what looked like a metal broomstick (in the second one)- because wasn't her broomstick originally orange, yellow and green? Wow, I didn't realize it- Sophie's really sneaky! She's sneaking out to follow people when she's seven, she stealing people's broomsticks when she's eight: watch out, world. I also thought that growing up with Marnie could be a little difficult, because she seems prone to overreactions (although in this case it was justified- the broomstick, one of the traditional symbols of witchcraft, was one of Marnie's biggest links to Halloweentown, her heritage, and also to her grandmother. I probably would have freaked out to find it broken, too) and yelling and being irrational, but that she would always feel bad about what she'd said and apologize later. **


	24. Skeletons

Even though Halloween was by far the highlight of the season, the entire fall season was Marnies' absolute favorite time of the year.

There was nothing that filled Marnie with more joy than seeing a completely yellow-leafed tree silhouetted against a clear blue sky, the shade it never was any other time than in the fall. Unless it was seeing a perfectly carved jack-o-lantern shining golden from every porch and windowsill. There was no better feeling than to soar through the vast midnight velvet sky, with a cold wind whipping you hair back away from your face, blowing your clothes behind you. Her favorite sounds in the whole world were the crunch of brown leaves underfoot, or the Halloween radio station that they always tuned in to every fall or walking a motion-activated Halloween Noisemaker. What scent could compare with candles and pumpkins? Fall was all around the best time of the year.

So, when Marnie, Aggie and Sophie had been walking about the mall, they walked past the Yankee Candle Company store, and saw the Halloween display. Marnie absolutely had to stop. They had the most amazing selection of fall-scented candles and adorable decorations and the most precious skeleton couple. Marnie wasn't sure what purpose they would serve; all she knew was that she wanted them. And so, with a twinkle in her eye, her grandmother had bought them for her. As they walked out of the store, it was all Marnie could do not to leap up into their air and smack her heels together.

Years later, Marnie was arranging her Halloween decorations, and from her storage box drew the skeleton couple. She smiled as she saw them, remembering both what an excitable creature she had been in her childhood and the very day that her grandmother had bought the bony couple for her. Her daughter, pale skinned, bright eyed and brown haired, climbed up onto the chair next to her so that she could peek at what her mother was holding and smiling at in such a way. "Mommy?" she asked. "Where did you get those skeletons?" Marnie set her skeletons down and picked her daughter up. "Well, Melusine, a long, long time ago, when I was older than you are now, I lived in the Mortal World with Great-Grandma Aggie and Grandma Gwen and Uncle Dylan and Aunt Sophie. Great-Grandma Aggie bought these for me because she knew I really, really wanted them." She explained. "Oh," responded Melusine. "All of you living together! That must have been really fun!" Marnie looked off into the distance, then turned her amber eyes back to her daughter, responding, "Yeah. It really was."

**Obviously, the last paragraph takes place about fifteen years in the future from when they bought the skeletons, which is right between the second and third movies. Marnie does have a husband who lives with her and her daughter in Halloweentown, but I'm not gonna say who. ;)**

**I wrote this because I always felt sort of sorry for Gwen- Marnie comes across as a little bit ungrateful and doesn't even make an attempt to see her mother's side of things at times, and so I imagine that once she's out on her own and she's making her own decisions about raising her child, she'd be a little more appreciative and understanding of her own mother and childhood, thus the last line. **


	25. Pumpkins

All the creatures from Halloweentown were sprawled on the front steps of the house in their human disguises, waiting for Marnie and Aggie to return. It was a bright and beautiful Saturday afternoon, and Aggie and Marnie had hustled them out onto the front steps, telling them to wait there, because when they got back they would have a "surprise" for them.

Aggie orange little car pulled into view and parked smoothly in front of the house. Marnie bounded out of the car and began to unload brilliant orange, boxy things from it. It took the Halloweentowners a few seconds to realize that Marnie and Aggie had gone out and purchased pumpkins. There were big ones and little tiny ones and gourd shaped ones and red and white and speckled ones. But most of all, there were vivid orange pumpkins, perfectly formed with sprouting green handles.

En masse, the creatures ran over to help unpack them. There were so many of them it looked like Marnie and Aggie had gone and bought out an entire stand somewhere. Aggie directed them all to the back porch, where they had set up lots of newspapers and pumpkin carving implements. Everyone got their own little space on the porch, with their own little fleet of pumpkins to do whatever they wished with.

Dylan, who had no interest in pumpkins or the carving of them, was raking all the leaves into a large pile, which scattered back to the far corners of the backyard every time Sophie sneezed, which was quite often, as she had a cold. Marnie and the other teenagers were blissfully engaged in scooping the out the viscera of and carving faces into their pumpkins and trading childhood anecdotes. Grandma Aggie was walking around with a big wooden bowl for collecting seeds so that they could roast them later. She also brought out some paint so that they could paint faces on the pumpkins that were too small to carve. Eventually, Mrs. Piper brought out mugs of hot cocoa and towels to wipe their slimy hands off on.

After the grown-ups had gone inside, it deteriorated into a pulp-slinging fight in which everyone got splattered with intensely orange innards and went inside with sticky hands and stained clothes and clotted hair, carrying armfuls of hollowed out pumpkins and laughing. After cleaning up, they watched Halloween shows and scary movies, consumed the entire stash of pumpkin seeds and ate their way through almost five bagfuls of candy.

They day the carved pumpkins was a day none of them ever forgot.

**I wrote this one because I carved pumpkins just yesterday, and it was really fun. However, every year, I can never seem to escape unscathed- I end up with yellow fingers for the next two days! **


	26. Reasons

There was a whole host of reasons why Kalabar had wanted to take over the Mortal World.

The first and foremost was that the Mortal World was a much bigger place, unfettered by magical rules as this one was, and it was populated by close-minded, prejudiced, backwards beings. They didn't deserve it. The creatures of Halloweentown, the witches and warlocks in particular, were powerful, superior in every way to the clumsy, stupid mortals. The magical creatures should have stayed, those many epochs ago, and fought. They could have won, and then the humans would have been banished to languish in an alternate dimension. Or at least, that was the answer he would give later, when people wanted to know why he had brought that Halloween people out of the dark, killed the mortals, and given them both of the worlds, with what mortals were left as their slaves. Some people, he knew, would dismiss this as unjust, a waste of life. But to Kalabar, it was only what they had coming, for their greed and idiocy. And he had no problem with ensuring his continued survival by ending someone elses, if you wanted to look at it in such base terms.

His private answer, the real reason, was that a long time ago, he had been in love with a girl. Really in love, not the way teenagers often said," we're in love!" but had no clue what it meant to say that. No, their love had been a love for the ages, a love to end all others. She had been perfect. There had been no one who could ever be as wonderful as her. But with no explanation and no catalyst, she had left him. He had been confused and upset- he thought she was happy. But she not only left him, but also ran away to the Mortal World, where she couldn't follow him. He found out on November first, after the portal had just closed. He heard later, that she found a mortal man who said he loved her, and married her. He saw for himself, in later years ,that she and her husband had children. Just like that, he had been ejected from her life. Rejected. Their love a thing forgotten.

This mortal man had stolen her from him. And so, Kalabar decided that if he had to move heaven and hell to unite the worlds, he would do so, and if it was with the very last breath in his body that he removed all mortals from the world, that was a reasonable price to pay. Because a mortal man had taken her, he would take the life of him and the rest of his race, too.

**Oh, great, now we've got a Kalabar Sr. backstory too! So, in short- Kalabar is insane. He was born that way. When he met Gwen, he already wanted to fall in love with her- it wouldn't have mattered to him if she had had a lazy eye and no hair and a lame foot, he still would have loved her because she was a Cromwell. He thought they were "really in love," but to Gwen he was never more than anything but a high school boyfriend. When Gwen rejected him for a mortal man, he developed an obsessive hatred of mortals, and was bent on destroying most of them and letting the ones that lived become slaves for the Halloweentown creatures, of which he would be king, and Gwen (whose mortal husband and half-mortal children would have been killed) would be his queen. (Thus his line in the first Halloweentown movie, "You! You could have been my queen! But you chose a mere mortal instead!")**


	27. Permanent

**I'm not entirely sure if there is anything I can say to justify my long absence. Jesusrocks, you must be about ready to slaughter me. I was checking all my stories and it came to my attention that I never finished this one, so I'll be trying to get the next 5 chapters up in a little more of a reasonable, timely fashion. Hope you enjoy!**

It was Halloween night. A three-quarters moon sat in its celestial backdrop, looking lonely and lost, like a dime in a vast, dark pocket. Kalabar walked down the street, smiling cheerily at everyone he happened past and trying very hard to keep his emotions- fear, nerves, anticipation, excitement, a touch of anger, sorrow- in check. Some parents or children, out by themselves, smiled back, but most took a tighter grip on their childrens' hands and bustled away. He had forgotten. This was a different world, one where he was not the kind-hearted boy who would be running for mayor in three day's time, he was a flamboyantly dressed young man, roaming the streets by himself on Halloween night.

The houses got progressively smaller as he went. This was where Gwen was _living_? It was a big step down from Cromwell Manor. Kalabar went up the front steps of 56 Rowan Street, but there was a feeling, prickling from his scalp to his spine. He knew this feeling- his magical second sense was telling him that if he went to the front door, he would not be well received. And he had learned, over the years, that this second sense of his rarely was wrong.

So he went around to the back of the house, squeezing between the wall and the trashcans, vaulting over the rattly chain-link fence without a sound. He walked over to the back door, but there it was, the prickling feeling again. Was he not supposed to go in at all? All he wanted was to see his bright and beautiful Gwen- it had been almost precisely two years since he had seen her sweet face, almost precisely two years since Aggie Cromwell, clothes in a state of disarray, hair straggling off her head as she pulled at it, had come to him, screaming incoherently about how Gwen had gone missing. One minute before the portal closed, a fire-message had come through, that Gwen was in the mortal world, and not to follow her. Kalabar had pounded on the bricks of the portal, shouting her name and trying not to lose it in public. He had pulled a softly sobbing Aggie into a hug and vowed that, come Halloween the next year, when the portal opened again, he'd go through and bring her back. He had searched for her, but she had been nowhere to be found, and he had returned, unendurably, empty-handed. Over the course of the intervening year, Aggie had scryed her so often that she eventually found her, and now Kalabar was here, to take her home, where she belonged. So he walked over to the window of the tiny house and looked inside.

Gwen was there, just as lovely and perfect as he always remembered her, hovering over a steaming pot on the stove. She turned to a cutting board and picked up a knife. Wielding it deftly like she was used to doing this. She began cubing potatoes and dumping them into the pot. Why was she cutting potatoes with a knife? She could use her magic and do it in a second. She must really want potatoes- she was cutting up so many. And then, through the door, walked the reason Aggie had been reticent to tell him where Gwen was, the reason she had left, the reason she hadn't come back.

A man walked through the swinging door into the kitchen, and it was hard to miss the way Gwen stood taller when he came in, the light that shone in her eyes when she looked at him. Kalabar watched with his mouth open as the man swooped her into a kiss, presenting her with a bouquet of orange marigolds when they broke apart. Kalabar could see their mouths moving, but couldn't hear what words were exchanged. They both jumped at a sound, and looked over at a corner of the kitchen, laughing. The man walked over and scooped something out of a bassinette- no, please let it be anything other than what he thought it was. It was an infant, wearing pink footy pajamas, who burbled happily when the man lifted her into the air and blew raspberries on her round stomach. The man put his arm around Gwen's shoulders and she wrapped her arms around him, faces so full of love and happiness as they looked at each other and their child.

Kalabar backed away ungracefully, a hand pressed over his mouth to keep himself from screaming out her name, not wanting to witness the scene for another moment. She had permitted a mortal to marry her, and now was raising his child, diluting her Cromwell bloodlines with his mortal taint. He wanted to collapse on the weedy ground, but instead he blundered over the fence and staggered past the trashcans, beyond caring who saw or heard him. He made it back to the portal sight, and sent himself across, reeling from shock and horror. Aggie was waiting for him on the other side, the hope on her face so strong as to be sickening. As soon as she saw that he was by himself, her face fell, tears welling in her eyes. "She's married- there's a child," he managed to choke out, and now Aggie covered her mouth with her hand, astonished. They both knew that leaving her child was something she wouldn't do.

Kalabar pushed past her and stumbled blindly through the streets, back to his college dorm, where he collapsed on his bed. When his sorrow was spent, he fell into a deep sleep. He would think about _everything_ the next day, when he could handle it. And he'd find a way to make good on his promise to Aggie the next day- he'd find a way to reunite them.

**I'm not sure why I did two Kalabar shots right in a row- I think it's because I've basically ignored him thus far in this fic. But oh well. This is the moment I was referencing when I said, "He saw for himself, in later years, that she and her husband had children," (in Reasons, the one immediately before this) because I think there probably would have had to be some sort of catalyst to keep him from constantly pestering Gwen to come back. Disclaimer- I know Gwen seems really young to be a mother, but Judith Hoag (actress who played her) was 30 when Halloweentown 1 was made, making her technically 17 when Marnie was born, but I've changed that so that she had her when she was 20 (a little less scary that way,) so I'm good. Also, a fire-message is like mail, but is delivered by magic and takes less time than traditional postage, and can only go between world when the portal is open, on Halloween night. Hope you liked it! **


	28. Hypnotized

**I'm so sorry for the extra-long hiatus- I promise I am not doing this on purpose. But tonight it was thundering and I had a kitkat bar, so I was like, "HALLOWEENTOWN. NOW,"**

After Marnie had yanked the spellbooks from his hands, Cal had disappeared, taking his thorny black vines with him. The resultant blaze of golden light had knocked Marnie backwards, and she laid sprawled on the gym floor, purple robes and silky hair puddling around her, the spellbooks clutched to her chest. "We got them. He's gone. We won," she panted, breathing heavily as she ran her fingers down the thick spines of the spellbooks, chocolate brown eyes still wide with shock that she had actually vanquished a warlock with a considerably prodigious skills set that far outranked her own, and with the cathartic rush that accompanied using so much power.

Though the circle of Cromwells- Aggie and Sophie helping Marnie up and depositing the spellbooks in her grandmothers waiting arms, Dylan looking on somewhat awkwardly- was relatively calm, the rest of the gymnasium was bedlam. Though people were no longer creatures (and Marnie was fairly willing to bet that Halloweentown had been restored to all of its colorful, eccentric glory) they were beyond astonished that they had been turned into some, for however brief a time. Panic quickly followed suit as the enormity of what had occurred settled in.

Grandma Aggie grandly waved her arm, smiling jubilantly as she crooned to the older copy of her book, holding it tenderly in the crook of her arm. Everything and everyone slowed down, as though they were moving through molasses. Only Gwen, shoving her way through the crowd to her children, was unaffected. She grabbed Sophie into a tight hug, until Sophie complained that she was being squished, then she moved on to Dylan, and finally, she faced Marnie. "We're going to have a very serious discussion about this when we get home, young lady," her mother said, like she always did, but her eyes were shining with pride-filled tears and she cupped Marnie's cheeks between her palms.

Grandma Aggie checked to make sure that Kals' spell that shut and locked all the doors and windows in the gym was still functioning properly, and then serenely mounted the stage, tapping the microphone. "Excuse me, is this thing on?" she asked. After the subsequent squeal of feedback, she cleared her throat and continued, "I need you all to remain calm, and follow my instructions," The slowing spell melted away, but panic did not resume. The people all stood frozen where they were, transfixed by the elderly woman on the stage. She motioned for her family to join her. "If you could all sit down on the floor, right where you are . . . ." Aggie trailed off. Spellbound, the people sat. "Now I want you all to close your eyes and listen to the sound of my voice as I count backwards from ten," she said, reaching out for Gwens' hand. Marnie eagerly offered hers to fill in the third part of the triumvirate of power for Aggie to draw on, but Aggie shook her head kindly and took Sophie's hand instead.

The entire school did exactly as they were told for the first and probably the last time in the history of high schools and listened, enraptured, as Aggie counted soothingly from ten. After she said one, she intoned, "You have no recollection of the past fifteen minutes. They are a blur. You had a good time. The party continued as usual. Carl Edwards got nominated Halloween King, and Halloween Queen has not yet been selected. Stand up now. Wake up now," She commanded, voice droning softly. The spell wore off as they climbed down from the stage. Everything continued as though Kal had never even been there.

"Grandma, how did you do that?" Marnie asked excitedly. "Well, your human 'psychics' weren't that far off base with all their hocus-pocus about hypnotizing others. It's mostly just the power of suggestion," She replied, a twinkle in her eyes as she shared this tidbit of information with her granddaughter. "I'm very proud of you, darling," she said, voice pitched a little lower despite the loudness of the partygoers as they nominated Halloween Queen.

". . . Does this mean we have to move again?" Sophie asked. They all laughed as they quietly slipped out the back door and headed home to sleep off a Halloween none of them would forget in a good long while.

**I think Grandma Aggie earns lots of win points for hypnotizing an entire high school like that. Wrote this one to explain how they got away with that whole "showdown" thing, because that always baffled me as well. And to answer Sophies' question, in my own head-canon, that IS the reason they had to move. Hope you guys liked it, more coming soon!**


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